[HR Trends] Sarah Sturgess: Organisations believe they are similar, so they must have the same employer brand. And it's just not the case

Employer branding starts with stories, and every organisation is unique in that respect, says Sarah Sturgess, Agency Director at SMRS and culture, employer branding & talent attraction specialist with over 25 years of experience.

We talked to Sarah during the Employer Branding Conference held in Bucharest on April 11 and uncovered challenges and lessons in the field. Sarah highlighted the evolution of employer branding over the last decade and its growing importance in the post-pandemic context.

Read on to learn why employer branding can be a strategic investment, how to get stakeholder buy-in for initiatives, and what all companies should do to have a strong employer brand.

But first, we wanted to know how Sarah chose this career path and what makes her passionate about the topic.

Why employer branding?

This career path was a little bit of an accident. I intended to go into product advertising. I knew I wanted to go into that area, but my second job after university was with an employer marketing agency. Once I was there, I absolutely loved my job.

We were at the start of digital advertising then. We went through a transformation from people using newspapers to everything being digital. And now we've reached a point where we're using AI in recruitment, so lots of changes have been happening in the field.

One of the reasons I work in employer branding is that it's the most creative part of my role. I have the opportunity to work with many organisations to uncover what makes them special and how they can tell their story. It's fun, exciting, and unique each time. As much as organisations think they're all similar, you uncover the differences once you get under their skin. So, employer branding is essential.

The evolution of employer branding

I remember developing one of our first employer brands about 12 years ago. At that point, employer branding was primarily discussed in big organisations with well-known brands.

That has changed over the past decades. I've seen all types of organisations, from charities and unknown businesses to public-sector organisations, think about how they can use employer branding to help them attract and retain talent.

Before the pandemic, many companies said, "I need employee branding because I've got skill areas that I can't hire into, or people don't know who I am." So, businesses started identifying that need. Then, during the pandemic, no one was hiring, and people stayed with the organisations they were in, which resulted in a dip in interest in employer branding.

But then, the minute we came out of the pandemic, culture became incredibly important to organisations. They faced challenges like needing to rebuild their businesses through hiring and retaining the people they had. People’s expectations on flexible working had changed, and movements like Black Lives Matter had put a much needed focus on diversity and inclusion.

Suddenly, organisations went from "we want to do this" to "we need this". As they started reanalysing their culture, employer branding was the vehicle to communicate that culture internally to colleagues or externally to potential candidates. At that point, I saw it was heading in a this-could-be-for-everybody direction.

Look at this event today. There are 250 people here, which shows that companies need and are doing employer branding.

Who manages employer branding?

Traditionally, employer branding often sat alongside talent attraction and acquisition, so those teams drove the employer brand because they used it to attract people to their organisations.

But I've seen a big shift, and increasingly, it has become a group of people who are a mix of recruitment and talent and people involved in colleague engagement. More organisations now have employer brand managers or heads of employer branding, and that's fantastic to see. I do some coaching, so I'm a massive advocate of getting more people into employer branding.

Do people need agencies? No. It's great for us that people use agencies, and we add in many areas. One is research because you can enable an organisation to get independent research not done by people who might have a conflict of interest. You do it faster and with rigour too.

We also add value to the creative process around developing and telling the story of that employer. The employer value proposition can technically be five or six reasons someone would work there, but how they're crafted and explained matters. We also ensure that the creative wrapper of the employer brand is aligned with the main corporate brand.

An internal brand team can do this themselves, but sometimes, internal teams in organisations are very focused on marketing to a consumer. Employer branding is instead marketing to colleagues and candidates, so it's a different target audience.

The biggest employer branding challenges

Stakeholder engagement and ensuring that there's awareness of what an employer brand is and what it's going to deliver for an organisation are the biggest challenges I've noticed.

A big part of my job is helping to educate people about employer brands, why they're important, and how they're different from other marketing types. From a stakeholder perspective, you must get people involved right at the beginning so there are no surprises later.

The most successful projects usually involve gathering a stakeholder team. The team acts like a steering committee and typically includes somebody from the talent team, recruitment, HR, internal communications, employer branding, and probably a leadership sponsor—somebody on the executive team who can champion the work.

Employer branding ROI

Employer branding can often save organisations money by helping them retain staff and avoiding unnecessary recruiting costs when they could use their brand to engage current employees.

One crucial area is helping people see the career pathways and journeys they could have within their organisation because one of the big reasons people leave somewhere is for the next job, step up, or promotion. So, if people can see where their next promotion is in that company, if they enjoy the culture and feel connected, they will stay, and that's a huge cost saving.

So, it's important to focus not only on what the employer branding budget is but also on the return on investment possible for each organisation.

The strategic importance of employer branding

Some organisations are so well known that their employer brand perception is assumed. People think, well, this company is amazing at technology and all these other things, so they must be great employers. But it only sometimes connects like that. An employer brand can help those well-known organisations ensure it supports their reputation.

For unknown organisations, employer branding can be the thing that makes them stand out.

We have a lot of clients who say to us, "We're the best-kept secret; no one knows who we are, but we've got this amazing culture and fantastic benefits that people out there don't know about." In those cases, an employer brand can help the company become known as a great employer before it’s even known for what service it provides or what products it creates.

Connecting employer branding with culture

Sometimes, people tell a superficial story about themselves as an organisation. When we encounter that situation, we are honest and help people see where to improve and what would help them be better employers.

From an employer branding perspective, our job is to help an organisation put its best foot forward. We don't shy away from enabling organisations to improve though. A big part of our purpose as a business is to help change organisations for the better, so creating something superficial and meaningless isn't in line with our values. We have a job to hold the mirror up and help them see how to improve.

The dynamic nature of employer brands

Employee expectations constantly evolve, but we've seen some significant changes in the past few years, like flexible working and prioritising well-being, having a clear purpose, and a company's impact on the world.

These trends reshape employer brands. I always say to our clients, you know, we may develop an employer brand, but it's never going to stand still. It must be tuned and adapted when things change in the economy, market, or business. For example, changing leadership or mergers can have a massive impact on the culture within an organisation.

Culture is, in effect, the foundation of your employer brand, so having a clear purpose and a story of where you're heading is incredibly important. If something changes, you need to re-look at the messaging and what you're saying as an employer because it's probably changed too.

One of the reasons I stay in this industry is that it's never the same. We might have a methodology that we reuse, byt the outcome is different for every organisation. What you uncover and how you tell a story are also different. And that's what keeps me excited and enthused about what I do.

Organisations often say, "We all do the same thing, so we must have the same employer brand." And it's just not the case.

Where should companies start?

It all starts with the story of who you are as an organisation.

For me, that's about understanding the perception between leaders' vision and where they're heading and reality in the organisation and ensuring they have a clear purpose. Ensure you have values or behaviours that align with what people want. This can be done or people like us can help.

We do it for ourselves. We're 100 people, and we do that kind of activity internally. Once you've got that, you can work with your in-house marketing team to help them develop their skills for targeting colleagues and candidates.

Also, any size business should get its people involved in storytelling. Use people who work for you as ambassadors and advocates of your employer brand. But wait to start doing that until you've worked out your story, or you will get loads of different stories out there. Get everyone together, work it out, and then use them to share and communicate.

The best place for an employer brand to live is internally within that organisation; it's across every piece of people communications, everything you do as a business to communicate with your colleagues and engage them. If it lives there, it will naturally get pushed outside the organisation. You might have to help it along the way in some areas, but always start there, and the rest will follow.

Getting stakeholder buy-in for employer branding

There's an ongoing suite of research that is publicly available that will help pull together say 20 key reasons why culture and employer branding are important. Choose the right ones that align with what your stakeholder is particularly engaged with or interested in.

The other thing is to research the costs and benefits of investing in employer branding.

Often, senior stakeholders or leaders assume that this will cost a huge amount of money and that it's almost as big as a rebrand project for an organisation, and it doesn't need to be. It can be done at a cost that works for that particular organisation. Do the research and talk to different agencies to understand what it costs and how you could do it.

Not least, show passion when you go and talk to those leaders. Explain why you believe in it and speak in a way that makes an employer brand look worthwhile and important but equally fun, engaging, and exciting for the business.

Another thing that often works with senior leaders is showing them what their competitors are doing. Look at a few competitors the leader would recognise and show them what they're doing. This can be a big influencer because people often want to stay caught up with the pack and their competitors.

Great employer brands

One of my favourite employer brands that I've worked on is the LEGO Group. What I love about them as an employer is that because they're so well-known as a retailer and everyone's played with their products, they have an undeniable market perception.

When we started working with them, we found that perception was positive, but people didn't realise all the different roles available at the LEGO Group. They weren't known for all the roles they needed or all the locations where they had offices or manufacturing sites.

An employer brand is not just about being known and telling a compelling and engaging story but it's about knowing your challenges and building an employer brand that meets them. So, the huge thing for them was attracting people into these areas that people didn't know the LEGO Group for, and that's a very different challenge than just pushing out your personality as an employer.

I also have absolutely loved working with charities to identify where they're spending money that could be repurposed for employer branding, so it doesn't need to be expensive. Also, the research stage with many charities we've worked with has been the most heartwarming process in terms of the people you meet, the purpose they're all driven by, how they're there to help people, and how wonderful it is to work there.